Surviving a shooting
What did the ensuing decades have in store for Phoenix officer hurt in the line of duty?
As Manny lay unconscious in the hospital, the damage from his wounds had already revealed itself at home.
Manny’s son, who went by Mannie, was 7 when he heard a knock on the door before school.
He stood beside his mother as she answered the door. He watched the shock spread across her face as two Phoenix police detectives told her that her husband had been shot.
The boy understood what the officers meant, but not the gravity of the situation. He thought of the cop shows on TV. They got shot all the time, and were always back for more adventures by the next week’s episode.
He didn’t realize his father was critically wounded and would spend the next three weeks in the hospital. During that time, he and his sister Lisa would be escorted back and forth to Roosevelt Grammar School in a police car.
His youngest brother, Louie, was only 2. An officer would guard their south Phoenix home day and
“I’m very proud of the fact that I got to see the world that my city evolved into. My city of Phoenix.”
Retired Phoenix police lieutenant
night.
The hospital had mistakenly released Manny’s home address to the media, and the Police Department was on high alert, fearing that friends of Cordova — who died at Good Samaritan shortly after the shooting — would come for Manny’s family.
“I’m glad the pig was shot. I hope he dies,” a stranger’s voice would tell young Mannie one day when he picked up the phone. Their home phone number could be found easily in the phone book. It was one of several similar calls made to the Quiñonez home in the weeks following the shooting.
Manny was discharged three weeks later and ordered to spend two months recovering at home.
But it didn’t keep him from working. Informants started calling his house three days after Manny arrived home from the hospital. They had tips on burglaries and robberies.
He was still in bandages, but making calls. He’d end up thwarting a burglary and an armed robbery that week.
He wanted to get back to work, but his body wasn’t ready. Later, he’d realize his mind wasn’t either.
Manny couldn’t stop thinking about the shooting — but he didn’t want to talk about it.
He became paranoid, avoiding the windows of his house and surveying his yard for intruders.
Post-traumatic stress disorder was a condition he’d never heard of in 1966.
The department didn’t employ psychiatrists or counselors — or if they did, Manny didn’t know about them.
Today, he knows he was suffering. But then, he probably wouldn’t have asked for help even if it was available. It was a “macho thing.”
He only knew of one coping mechanism. One way to keep the repetitive thoughts at bay.
He found it in a bottle.
Racial tensions run high
The people of south Phoenix called the Phoenix Police Department the “Black Gestapo,” alluding to the NaziGermany police force and the Phoenix officers’ all-black uniforms.
They were angry. They didn’t want to be part of the city of Phoenix.
Annexation meant more law enforcement, more taxes and forced loyalty to a City Hall that had not yet gained the trust of the low-income Latino neighborhoods.
After the Phoenix City Council voted to annex 75 miles of what is now south and west Phoenix in 1960, a police officer hit and killed a teenager while driving his patrol car on a poorly-lit street in south Phoenix — escalating tensions to an all-time high.
Manny’s duty as a patrol officer on the south side at the time was as much about repairing a broken relationship as it was about making arrests.
His department-issued vehicle didn’t have air conditioning the first year he was assigned to south Phoenix. He kept his windows down to allow a breeze to trickle in, but it also allowed him to connect with the community in a way that many officers don’t now.
They could see him and he could see them. He’d wave as he drove by and talk to them in Spanish at stop lights.
They began to trust him. Soon, they were tipping him off to criminal activity in the area and calling the station to ask for Manny to come handle issues.
The community accepted him. Not all of his colleagues received the same welcome.
The El Rey Cafe was a 75-seat Mexican restaurant on Central Avenue near Buckeye Road. It was open late, making it a perfect after-duty hangout for officers.
But on Aug. 31, 1963, Manny was sent to the restaurant on official duty.
His captain told him and his partner Jessy Stokes to go to the cafe in plain clothes, sit at the bar and keep an eye out for any trouble.
“Are you expecting a problem?” Manny asked.
The captain said no.
What he didn’t tell Manny was there were rumblings that the civil rights movement that had been unfolding across the nation was about to hit Phoenix — specifically, El Rey Cafe.
Manny and Stokes sat at the bar and ordered a bowl of green chile. Doeg Nelson, an African American sergeant who would later lead the department’s first community relations bureau, walked into El Rey Cafe and tried to give his order to the owner, Connie Peralta.
“We don’t serve n-----s here,” Peralta told him.
Nelson tried to order again.
“You don’t understand. We don’t serve n-----s,” she said.
Manny was taken aback. He didn’t know that the cafe refused service to African Americans — but he quickly realized why he had been sent there on that day.
Peralta’s son, the cook, came out from the kitchen wielding a baseball bat. Manny and Stokes abruptly stood up and got between the Peraltas and Nelson.
Manny looked through the front window of the cafe and saw 50 or 60 members of the NAACP picketing.
Nelson, with the support of the Police Department’s leadership, had been working with the NAACP to clamp down on racial discrimination throughout the city.
The peaceful demonstrations continued for eight days.
Peralta eventually decided to change her policy and allow African American customers, but only because she received anonymous threats, she told a Republic reporter.
Manny watched as his city changed right in front of him. He didn’t want to admit that he was changing, too.
For the ‘good of the department’
After he’d physically recovered from being shot, Manny returned to the department as a narcotics detective on Jan. 4, 1967. His partner, Stokes, had returned about a week earlier.
They came back to work too soon, they would both later concede.
They’d spend most of their days together — sometimes hours at a time on mundane surveillance assignments.
They never talked about the shooting.
Manny didn’t talk to anyone about the shooting, not even his wife. But he thought about it constantly.
Manny was never seen in a bar, but alcohol had control of his life. A six-pack of beer and a swig of whiskey eased the paranoia, the anxiety, the memories.
He was a “closet drinker” — keeping his vice from everyone except the people who meant the most. Mary and the kids could see what was happening, but Manny wouldn’t tell them why.
He was promoted to sergeant and stationed in south Phoenix in April 1968.
In August, a call came through about a disturbance in the Sidney P. Osborn Housing Projects. Manny pulled in through an alleyway as a shotgun blast blew out one of his officers’ tires.
Manny grabbed his shotgun and started walking toward where the shot was fired. Click. Boom.
Three birdshot pellets pierced the top of his head, his upper lip and left arm.
His wounds were minor, but he still dreaded telling his wife and mother that he’d been shot again.
He drove himself to St. Luke’s hospital, where a doctor removed two of the pellets. The doctor couldn’t get to the pellet in his lip because it was too swollen. It would eventually start to fester its way out through the inside of his lip, and Manny would pull it out himself.
When he returned to work, he had transfer orders waiting for him. He was to be the relief sergeant, working mostly from the front desk and entirely off the streets.
The higher-ups said the change was for the “good of the department.” Manny knew it was really for the good of his wife — who saw her husband hospitalized for gunshot wounds twice in less than two years.
It would be 10 years before he returned to patrol.
During that time, he’d serve as a narcotics sergeant, where he would be recognized by the American Legion as the Phoenix Police Officer of the Year and nominated for the White House Advisory Committee Conference on Children and Youth.
He was excelling professionally, never letting his internal battle wounds show through while on the job.
But Manny often relived the shooting in his mind — the first shooting, the one that almost left him dead. The one that did leave Cordova dead.
He’d wake up in a puddle of sweat. He’d have another drink.
Retiring from a different department
Manny retired from the Phoenix Police Department in 1988 as an accomplished lieutenant.
As he prepared to leave the career that had consumed most of his life, he couldn’t help but realize he was leaving a very different department than the one he was hired on to 30 years earlier.
The department had removed height and weight requirements for officers in the 1970s, which opened the door for more female recruits.
Police Chief Larry Wetzel, who served in that role from 1968 to 1980, established the community relations division and had its leadership visit Southern universities to recruit African American officers.
Undercover officers would use rental cars while on assignment instead of their personal vehicles.
As technology developed, the modernization of the department was swift and communication within the department and between agencies became much more feasible.
Manny’s opinions on the changes were more progressive than many of his peers — particularly when it came to women.
He’d long thought that women should make up half of the Police Department.
Growing up in Tolleson, his mothers and sisters knew how to work the fields, just like the boys. He’d raised his daughter the same way.
Some other officers were almost protective over the female officers, showing up as backup when the female officers didn’t need their assistance.
In time, the female officers proved themselves. Manny never doubted them.
In his second career, he would serve under two female mayors — including the first few weeks of current Mayor Kate Gallego’s term.
Manny had been retired for 20 years when he got a call about a security guard position in City Hall in 2008. One of the guards who protect the mayor and council had abruptly left and they needed someone to fill in for three or four months until they could find someone permanent.
Louie warned his dad that he probably wouldn’t like his new gig.
“You do understand that they just want you to be an imposing old man?” Louie asked.
He told the city he’d help out for a few months. He stayed 11 years.
Manny towered over the tiny wood desk on the 11th floor of City Hall. He had a portable radio, but no weapon, and instead of a police badge he had a standard city-employee access card.
Some days he’d have to calm down fired-up residents who wanted to talk to the mayor or council members about their problems. Most days he just greeted city employees.
He watched Phoenix leaders, diverse in gender and race, bounce in and out of important conference-room meetings. He talked up the young police officers who patrolled the city buildings, amazed at their new tools and techniques.
His life’s story mirrored the transformation of his city. Both had evolved — first grudgingly, and then at lightningspeed — into something better than before.
It was a story he was almost ready to tell.
‘What the hell happened that day?’
Manny was in his garage alone on Nov. 9, 1989.
His wife knew to leave him alone when he got like this.
He’d already downed half a pint of vodka and maybe three or four beers.
As he stumbled to the door, he slammed into a 3⁄4-inch gas pipe and separated his shoulder.
Even drunk, the pain was unbearable.
He threw himself onto the bed in his enclosed porch and suffered, thinking about the choice he had to make.
Manny made it to the doctor as soon as the office opened the next morning.
His shoulder mostly healed, but the lesson lasted. He quit drinking cold turkey that day.
Occasionally, his back still spasms — a reminder of his last bad night and a caution against picking up the old habit.
The moments of panic and paranoia didn’t subside immediately, but Manny found other ways to cope. He threw himself into furniture restoration and welding. He traveled with his wife to Hawaii and Mexico where they’d deep-sea fish. He cared for his grandchildren so their parents could pursue their careers.
He was in a good place when he returned to City Hall as a security guard, but he still harbored questions about the shooting.
On one particularly slow day at the security desk, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed up his old partner, Stokes.
Manny was finally ready.
“Can you tell me what the hell happened that day?” Manny asked.
Stokes recalled Oct. 14, 1966, as he remembered it. Manny learned that it was Detective Don Procunier who pulled him out of the line of fire after he was shot. He learned that Stokes arrived at the hospital in the back of a police car as Manny waited for an ambulance.
They were little details, but they mattered to Manny.
Stokes asked Manny to tell him what he remembered. They pieced the day together.
It was a day Manny had thought about for 43 years. But for the first time, Manny had a different reaction.
Relief.
A belated honor
Once Manny started talking, he couldn’t stop.
Not just about the shooting, but about everything from that chapter of his life.
He talked about Miranda. He talked about the undercover drug buys he orchestrated. He talked about the police officers he respected and the changes he watched in his city.
And from his perch at City Hall, he had a lot of potential listeners.
Manny got to know Assistant Police Chief Dave Harvey, who worked out of City Hall. He told Harvey about the shooting after he learned that Harvey had also been injured in the line of duty.
They brought in pictures and swapped stories, and then Harvey orchestrated a belated honor for Manny.
About a dozen police officers stood on the stage of the Comerica Theater on Nov. 15, 2015, for the Police Department’s annual awards ceremony.
All of them were retired Phoenix Police officers who had been wounded in the line of duty, but were never honored for their sacrifice while they were working officers. Manny and Stokes, in their 80s now, and retired from the department for decades, stood shoulder to shoulder with the others.
It was 49 years almost to the day when Police Chief Joe Yahner presented them with the Police Shield Award — the Police Department’s equivalent of a Purple Heart — for their injuries at the Red Rooster Inn.
Manny was in a daze. “Is this really happening?” he thought.
It was the proudest moment of his career.
His personal cheering section, comprised of his kids, grandkids, siblings, nieces and nephews, roared with applause when Manny’s name was called.
They were supposed to stay silent until all the names had been called, but Manny didn’t care.
It was his day — at least until he actually got his own day.
Manny Quiñonez Day
The mood was somewhere between somber and celebratory in Phoenix City Hall on April 12, 2019.
Just before noon, one of the downstairs security guards came to relieve Manny and he took the elevator down 11 floors to the lobby, where his family had reserved a small meeting room for his final retirement party.
Manny’s hair was white. His face was wrinkled and spotted from the Arizona sun. His hearing aids didn’t always work and his walk was slow.
He was 85. Still, he wasn’t sure about retirement. In the weeks leading up to his final day, the Police Department leadership and City Council had made a big fuss about his leaving.
“Why me? I’m just another person who comes in through the employee entrance,” Manny said.
Interim Mayor Thelda Williams, whose son served on the police force with Manny, issued a proclamation in his honor. Police Chief Jeri Williams, the first female and second African American police chief, surprised him with a congratulatory send-off as well.
When Manny made it to the conference room, his family was waiting for him. In the next hour, dozens of friends, coworkers and passersby would trickle in to wish him the best.
Manny wasn’t sure what he’d say.
He’d written some notes, but ultimately just started talking, the way he had around City Hall for 11 years.
He talked about Mary, the love of his life. About Mannie, who was about to retire as a detective from the Seattle Police Department. About Lisa, “queen of the mountain,” who was one of the first female quasi-law enforcement park rangers in Phoenix. And about Louie, who had recently retired as a federal agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Louie piped up and told his father that he should probably start talking about himself.
But he didn’t need to. Everyone in the room already knew his stories. That’s why they were there.
Gallego, who’d been inaugurated just a few weeks earlier, proclaimed April 12, 2019, “Manny Quiñonez Day.” She was the 11th mayor Manny served under during his career.
As the party wrapped up, Manny went back to the small desk on the 11th floor for his last few hours as the City Council’s watchdog.
“I’m very proud of the fact that I got to see the world that my city evolved into. My city of Phoenix,” he said.